


Headcanon: Rude and Chelsea, An Alternate Future

by turkmama (TwoCatsTailoring)



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Ending, Expanded Universe, F/M, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 20:04:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21082331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/pseuds/turkmama
Summary: I feel like if FFVII were reality (awfully close, at this point I know) Chelsea wouldn't have made it out of Midgar. But, here's another idea!





	Headcanon: Rude and Chelsea, An Alternate Future

Canon doesn’t touch Chelsea again at all. She drops off the face of the world and there’s not even a suggestive sprite anywhere else again (to my knowledge. Those with more recent playthrough knowledge can tell me if I’m wrong and there is a blonde woman in a green dress somewhere.) From her dialogue with the Player Turk though, it seems to indicate that she intends to stay with AVALANCHE 1.0, although her talk of rebirth seems to indicate that she doesn’t think she’ll survive long. But there is NOTHING about her after she walks off-screen.

But here’s a link to the [CHELSEA CHAPTER](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DG894t8Wspbo%26index%3D16%26list%3DPLE75858F7C5A3927D&t=MGI0NDcwMDNkNWNlOTZmMWIyODA3MjcyMzBjZDZlMTU5ZWY3ZmUyYSxFYkNMMVZ2SA%3D%3D&b=t%3A7Atm377cD7H3X4hv5_QKcQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftwocatstailoring.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F101265732734%2Falternate-history&m=0) and here’s a link to the [LAST SEGMENT](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DiB7LjO2ZCVY%26list%3DPLE75858F7C5A3927D%26index%3D19&t=NWIzNDY1NzVhNjRiZWUxMjkwNGRjNjIzODE3ZjYwMjAzZGM2ZmY1NixFYkNMMVZ2SA%3D%3D&b=t%3A7Atm377cD7H3X4hv5_QKcQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftwocatstailoring.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F101265732734%2Falternate-history&m=0) of it because that is of particular interest. 

The interaction between Rude and the Player Turk (Shotgun in this playthrough) is fairly straightforward. But for me, there is a shift when Reno enters the scene. I might be reading this wrong, but I feel like Reno knows exactly what’s happening here, has probably been listening the whole time and is both annoyed with Rude for getting involved with the wrong woman and he’s unhappy because his friend is unhappy. 

Because let’s examine these two for a minute through the lens of hindsight. Even if they had not been partners long at this point the main thing to realize is that they ARE partners already. In reviewing the canon contexts of the Turks, for them to have dedicated partners is a little odd - I mean you will partner up with the same person from time to time and of course certain weapons work well together (as do certain personalities) but on most of the missions in BC, the Player Turk is working alone. So already, even at this ‘prequel’ point, Reno and Rude are a team - maybe not as inseparable as in later-timeline stuff, but they certainly know each other well enough for Reno to have noticed and done something about the fact that Rude’d been acting weird for a while.

So the Player Turk (Shotgun in this case) tells Rude that she would have gone after Chelsea and Rude starts to walk away only to have his path blocked by Reno talking about how he looks like crap, giving him minor hell for being sentimental, and then suggests: let’s go home and get out of the cold. The idea of heading home, warm and safe, on a cold night is one that is comforting. Reno might not approve, he might think Rude is the biggest fucking idiot alive, but his friend is clearly not doing that great and Reno gives a shit about that. So home they go, to good old HQ.

And here is where my theories split. And here’s where my rambling really begins. What if Rude changed his mind and did go after Chelsea? Maybe later that night he’s just like, I love her and I’m going after her, hell or high water.

So he goes hunting for her, but her life is pretty much forfeit with AVALANCHE 1.0 cause those boys don’t play. She failed in her mission, let the target go when she had the perfect chance, and came back talking about not wanting to do this anymore. With people like Fuhito and Shears around, the girl was going to die.

It’s a given for this that Rude would beat them to her. Even if it was just by minutes. He’s a Turk, she knows how AVALANCHE 1.0 operates and sort of what they would do so it is completely feasible that they could get out of there unhurt and personally I like the idea of it happening with minutes to spare, just so that AVALANCHE 1.0 knows where she is and who she is with.

Because then there comes the challenge of protecting her. This is important because, motivationally speaking, without AVALANCHE 1.0 being a threat to her, Rude could just abandon ShinRa and both of them slip off into the ether. Eventually, the Turks would find him and it would be game over, but it would buy them some time. But with AVALANCHE knowing where Chelsea is, he knows that he can’t protect them both from AVALANCHE and ShinRa.

So, you use one against the other. In order for Chelsea to fall under ShinRa’s 'protection,’ she has to matter to them. In order for her to matter she has to actually turn traitor - something he would never ask her to do because she would never be trusted - or she has to be family of ShinRa. Which is easily enough accomplished if he marries her. 

Now, before anyone flings the whole 'But Veld…!’ argument at me, there are a few things you need to realize. Veld bombed Kalm, killing his wife and child - but that child is very much NOT dead and is now, in this timeframe, a grown woman. Time has passed and if there is one thing we know about the Turks is that the passage of time has spelled massive changes for them. (Just look at Turks from the Vincent Valentine era all the way to post-AC to see that, but that’s another essay for another day.) Also, AVALANCHE 1.0 is also no band of lightweights. Chelsea’s association with them marks her as being capable and dangerous in her own right and I can’t imagine that ShinRa or the Turks would necessarily want to take the risk of harming her.

Because married to Rude, not only would they incur the wrath of AVLANACHE (possibly) but they would incur the wrath of one of their own if they went after her. And I will admit that his quiet tends to lend itself to coming off as more threatening. Also, ShinRa is so big and unwieldy that they probably won't even realize who she was as they were already strained to the point of being weak enough to start chipping apart.

So my alternative theory is that he does go after her and, in order to do their level best to make sure they both stay alive, they get married. But they’ve really only known one another for about a month or so. So it’s going to be awkward because they really don’t know one another well at all. 

Now, they know each other’s habits and they know each other's preferences and they know well enough that they each knew what the other was up to in terms of her being a spy and him having left his phone there on the bar on purpose. It all had to play out that way, it all had to happen and I think that they both are just very honest with one another about that. But they are pretty much two strangers who’ve just gotten hitched and now have to figure out how on earth they are supposed to pull this off.

And I think it was hard, once the honeymoon phase wore off. Because he’s still a Turk. And she didn’t join AVALANCHE 1.0 because it looked like fun (I’m telling you, 2.0 is a bunch of cream puffs!) But I also think that neither of then would give up on each other no matter how much they fought and argued. I also think that the relationship went through several abusive turns over the first few years, but eventually what they managed to get to was a bone-deep love for one another that was tempered by the fact that neither of them harbored any illusions about the other. Both of them are headstrong, passionate, and volatile people and they make each other insane but there’s no place either of them would rather be.

But then ShinRa begins to really fall apart. Rude (along with Reno and Tseng) is put on the hit list for their part in helping to rescue Veld and reunite him and Elfe and there is no protection left for Chelsea. He insists she leave, cut ties with him and just runs, but she’s just as stubborn as he is and refuses. The argument escalates, they both get really irrational and the end result is that Chelsea does leave. 

And never comes back. Because at this point in the story, the pace picks up. It is only about 2 months after assisting Veld and Elfe that Rufus steps in at the hearing for Tseng, Reno, and Rude and saves them from being killed. The timeline that I subscribe to has this happening at the same time that AVALANCHE 2.0 is blowing up Reactor 1 in the OG. 

In that two month gap, Chelsea could have gone anywhere and with the chaos in ShinRa, the smart decision would be for her to go as far away as she could. If she gets too near ShinRa, she will probably be killed for her association with Rude. AVALANCHE 1.0 is done for and she doesn’t know any of the 2.0 people and they clearly do not have the same aims as 1.0 so she has no place there. She probably thinks that Elfe is dead since that was what the reports stated.

With Rude’s status in ShinRa reinstated, the machinery of OG is in full swing. Everyone knows that I believe that the Turks were driving Cloud and Co. forward, pushing, testing, and occasionally guiding them in the right direction. With this being his prime directive, Rude doesn’t have time to do anything about hunting down his wife. And given the fact that she actually walked out (something she’d never done before, neither of them being the type to just walk away) he’s pretty sure by the time the reach Gongaga, that she’s just not coming back. Because the logical place for her to go if she wanted to find him would be Costa del Sol. 

They’d talked about it, of course. What she would do if he was ever killed. And they’d agreed that if she was ever in trouble and they were apart somehow, she would go to his mother in Costa. So after Junon, he is reunited with his mom for the first time in 8 years and she’s never heard of this wife of his. 

That was a hard one to explain and he got one hell of an earful for being a complete dick.

But she didn’t go there, so he can only assume that it’s over. She doesn’t want back into this life and frankly, it is starting to wear on him as well. So when we hit the gossip squad scene at Gongaga, very little in my existing headcanon for Rude has changed, save for the nature of his relationship with Elena. In the main-line headcanon, I think that they did have some sort of sexual relationship that both eventually realized wasn’t quite right. In this scenario, I think they probably had one of those drunken one-night-stands just after or maybe in Costa del Sol that neither of them is particularly proud of but that neither of them denies. 

So, how does Rude being married fit in with the gossiping Turks? Simple. It’s all in tone. Reno’s doesn’t change for this one, he’s just kind of being both curious and a bit of a jerk with Rude (again, dude’s probably at that 'acceptance’ stage of his marriage being over only without much he can do about it as he has no clue where to find Chelsea.) So Reno eggs him on a bit, bringing up Elena then insisting that he pick one of the Cloud and Co. girls. And here’s where his tone goes from:

_*kind of embarrassed* “Tifa.”_ to

_*heaves a sigh and shuts Reno up* “Tifa.”_

But even that in and of itself is telling. Who is Tifa Lockhart? Other than another AVALANCHE girl, she is strong-willed, has a bit of a temper, a touch of self-doubt, and puts up with exactly zero shit from Turks. I’ll let you think about that for a minute. Okay, all done? Yeah, tell me this man doesn’t have a type.

the lack of voice-acting in OG lends itself well to this and I would just like to thank the old school games for giving us the option of interpretations to vary. It is making my life much more interesting.

But on with the story! 

So we trot through OG then the rest of the way and what happens then after Holy and the Lifestream burst forth and both heal and alter the land? Geostigma. Mass relocation. Cities are destroyed, the land alters completely, people die, ShinRa is done, and the Turks don’t even get to take a deep breath before they are plunged back into more chaos with Rufus missing and then theorizing and trying to hunt down a chunk of Jenova in the hopes of fixing Geostigma.

Let me just reiterate that this is absolute chaos. The entire population of Midgar that survived Meteorfall (you know, big flaming ball of rock falling out of the sky and getting caught and fought in their living rooms by the Lifestream that ripped up through dirt and rock and buildings?) relocated to Kalm. KALM, PEOPLE. This is some serious shit man, this is millions of people thronging to the nearest place with flushing toilets when it is only meant to hold probably a couple hundred thousand. In Case of Yuffie, the land itself has ripped apart around Wutai, not just once but multiple times because cracks formed and mountains collapsed and new caverns opened up! 

My point is that even if Rude wasn’t up to his eyeballs in protecting Rufus’s interests, finding Chelsea, no matter how much he wanted to, would have been nearly impossible. If she was even still alive somehow. The more time that passed, the more he rationalized that she probably didn’t make it, and even if she had, she’d left. Walked away and was done with him. So eventually, he just stopped scanning faces in the throngs of people in Kalm, Edge, Healin, Junon. 

And the same could be said of her as well. Looking for him would have been awful. And with ShinRa all but wiped off the map, he was probably dead anyway. There would be rumors, but chasing those became a lesson in futility because even if he’d been there three days before, he would be long gone by now. Once a Turk…. So she’d give up to, consider heading to Costa, but then pride or fear of hearing that he really was dead or maybe his mother was dead, who knew. And there was work to be done, there was rebuilding happening back at the outskirts of Midgar. Honest work, serious, helpful, fruitful, productive things to be done and she would be one of the first in line to sign up with the WRO.

But then the Remnants turned up. The infant WRO wasn’t ready for that level of panic and violence in Edge. Not yet. But they could help with putting lives back together again. And so they did and it was in the middle of all that and after two and a half very long, busy years that they found each other again. 

By accident as his looming presence darkened the door of the medic station where she was getting a finger stitched up and he was leading a small girl with a black eye in to be looked after.

And it wasn’t easy. And they were both more stubborn than ever. And they fought like cats and dogs. But they still loved hard, cared deep, and were not blind to one another’s faults.


End file.
